DARE ME (STUPIDISCO)

Junior Jack

This is a weird one, it's a remake of a remake. That's the world of popular music for you, anything can happen. Way back in the mists of time, or August 1985 for those of us sensible enough to use calendars, the Pointer Sisters got to No.17 with a song called Dare Me. Not one of their better known singles, I'll grant you, but then I'm So Excited seemed to lend itself better to Crunchie ads and Girls Aloud overhauled Jump instead. A somewhat overlooked single in the grand scheme of things, really. Shame too as it's actually pretty good, still, such is life. 19 years later (after the fuss had died down, obviously), Junior Jack decided to rebuild Dare Me into something of a club classic. He even went to the trouble of renaming it Stupidisco – see what he did there? Play on words, marvellous. The general public weren't that impressed as it only got to No.26, but what do they know anyway?... I'll stop with that particular line of investigation before things get personal, shall I? Anyway, here we are then, Dare Me – Mark III. It's all very simple, Junior Jack's left his tune completely intact – after all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it – but this time, instead of using only the chorus as he did with Stupidisco, he's put the complete vocal track over the top. Easy peasy, in fact, it sounds like he hasn't really bothered putting in the effort to update this track. However, it's not that cut and dried. See, his tune was that good it hasn't dated one bit, which is no mean feat for something that's nearly three years old and the vocals fit over the top so neatly that you'd never guess they weren't there before, which they were originally but he didn't use them but now he's put them back in which they were in the first place – I hope you're following all this, because I'll be asking questions later. The upshot of all this is that what we now have is an alternative version of Stupidisco AND Dare Me that complements both the original songs wonderfully, hence the dual billing. It's not like Perfect (Exceeder), which works better when it's just Exceeder, this works whichever way you look at it. Junior Jack, take a bow. This ought to go Top 10 at the very least, and you never know, it might even be safe for me to say that now. I said nice things about Fall Out Boy and Bloc Party in recent weeks and they've done alright, so let's see if my luck holds, eh?

LISTEN

Beyonce

I did, you shouldn't. Believe me, the song title is not good advice. I'm having to write this as I'm listening to the song, because as soon as it finishes that's it – I can't remember a damned thing about it. You've got Beyonce performing all manner of vocal gymnastics while the session musicians play some formulaic slowie in the background that they've probably done a thousand times before and the whole thing's marginally less fun than a paper cut. At least a paper cut gives you something to think about once it's happened. It's even got an electric guitar wailing away towards the end and a big finish that a 1980s Whitney Houston single would've been proud of. Not the best single she's ever released, surprisingly enough.

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

Hannah Montana

I must be getting old. I can remember when this song came out originally and it was sung by Shania Twain. Well, maybe not, but my God it sounds just like the sort of safe, radio-friendly, inoffensive American teen pop/rock La Twain was peddling at the back end of the 1990s, the only difference being that it now seems to have the drum pattern from Blur's Song 2 tacked onto the front of it. I know these things go in cycles, like flares and scooters and the like, but couldn't we have left this music in the past and just moved on?